By Stuart Pfeifer Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
September 5, 2007
They call themselves the Regulators.
They wear tattoos of a skull-faced man holding a shotgun, fire screaming from its barrels. They refuse to testify against their buddies. They've been accused of extorting and intimidating those outside their ranks.
No, they're not members of a street gang. They're Los Angeles County sheriff's deputies at the Century station in Lynwood. And their "club" is part of a culture that's dogged the nation's largest sheriff's department for years.
A decade after the county paid $9 million to resolve a series of brutality lawsuits involving a different group of Lynwood deputies known as the Vikings, the Regulators are the focus of litigation alleging racism in the department and involving accusations that a group of deputies is behaving like a gang.
This time the lawsuit was filed by a deputy, Angel Jaimes, a Regulators member who alleges that black administrators in the department unfairly stalled his career by referring to him and other Latino deputies as the Mexican Mafia, a notorious prison gang.
Jaimes, a beefy 43-year-old who joined the department in 1989, said the Regulators are nothing more than a close-knit group of deputies, not exclusively Latinos, who support one another and promote aggressive, ethical policing that keeps communities safe. Only deputies who work hard and follow policy are encouraged to join, Jaimes said.
"It's like the all-stars of a baseball team. You get the best," he said.
Jaimes would not disclose how many deputies belong to the group, but he says he was the 63rd to join when he signed up years ago. They don't all still work at the Century station, which is staffed by more than 100 deputies.
Allegations of misconduct by Regulators have simmered for more than four years. Anonymous letters, purportedly drafted by deputies not in the group, have accused members of extorting money from other deputies, acting like gang members and heavily influencing shift scheduling and administration at the Century station. But no allegations have been proved, Sheriff's Department officials say.
Concern about the Regulators is reminiscent of one of the department's darkest chapters: allegations in the early 1990s that Lynwood station deputies -- many of them members of a group dubbed the Vikings -- brutalized minorities, falsely arrested suspects and engaged in wrongful shootings.
A federal judge referred to the Vikings as a "neo-Nazi white supremacist gang," and the county agreed as part of a 1996 settlement to spend $1.5 million retraining deputies to prevent such abuses and $7.5 million to compensate victims of alleged abuses by Lynwood deputies. [....]